Last week (23/04/2015) the Sony World Photography Organisation announced the winners of the world’s largest photography awards, with American photographer John Moore winning Current Affairs Photographer of the Year for his project Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital and then taking home the L’Iris d’Or/ Photographer of the Year and $25,000 (USD) prize as well as the latest Sony digital imaging equipment.

Moore is a Senior Staff Photographer and Special Correspondent for Getty Images, and his winning photographs have been universally credited for the early exposure of the scale of the Ebola epidemic in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Based in New York, Moore has photographed in more than 70 countries, and is a past recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal, been named Photographer of the Year by both Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association and has been recognised four times by World Press Photo.

In a collective statement, judges Xingxin Guo, Xinhua News Agency Image Centre, China; Jocelyn Bain Hogg, photographer, UK; and Oliver Schmitt, Spiegel Online, Germany, said of the work: “John Moore’s photographs of this crisis show in full the brutality of people’s daily lives torn apart by this invisible enemy. However, it is his spirit in the face of such horror that garners praise. His images are intimate and respectful, moving us with their bravery and journalistic integrity. It is a fine and difficult line between images that exploit such a situation, and those that convey the same with heart, compassion and understanding, which this photographer has achieved with unerring skill. Combine this with an eye for powerful composition and cogent visual narrative, and good documentary photography becomes great.”

Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital: In the summer of 2014 Monrovia, Liberia became the epicenter of the West African Ebola epidemic, the worst in history. Although previous rural outbreaks were more easily contained, once the virus began spreading in Monrovia’s dense urban environment, the results were described by Medecins Sans Frontieres as “catastrophic”. With a tradition of burial rites that include the washing of the dead bodies of loved ones, Liberians became infected at alarming rates. Only a decade after a long civil war, Liberia’s fragile health system was unable to cope, international agencies were slow to react, and the country struggled. President Sirleaf declared a state of emergency, and a military quarantine of the nation’s largest township of West Point, proved futile. Slowly healthcare workers, both Liberian and foreign, made progress in slowing the spread of the disease, but by year’s end the outcome of the regional epidemic was far from certain.

While John Moore’s moving photographs certainly stand out, we have made our own complimentary selection of the best of The Sony World Photography Awards 2015 from the thirteen professional categories including 2nd and 3rd placements. Those categories included Architecture, Arts & Culture, Campaign, Conceptual, Contemporary Issues, Current Affairs, Landscape, Lifestyle, People, Portraiture, Sport and Still Life. We’ll begin with an image by Scott Typaldos, whose work from his Butterfly Chapter series was included in SMBHmag ISSUE16 Accident and Emergency.

All the winning and shortlisted images will be exhibited at Somerset House, London from 24 April – 10 May along with a dedicated curation to Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient, Elliott Erwitt.